Benjamin Tua
Informed Comment / August 19, 2026
Washington, D.C. – Hamas has frequently been described as a rigidly fanatical terrorist organization intent on destroying Israel. It is argued that it does not have the support of most Palestinians, and cannot be part of a peace process. Hamas’ military wing’s attack in Israel on October 7, 2023, in which a majority of those killed were civilians, including women and children, is cited as proof of this assertion.
In a statement published in The Washington Post on November 19, 2023, President Biden said that “as long as Hamas clings to its ideology of destruction, a ceasefire is not peace.” He added that, “An outcome that leaves Hamas in control of Gaza would once more perpetuate its hate and deny Palestinian civilians the chance to build something better for themselves.” In a similar vein, Secretary of State Rubio said in February 2025 that as long as Hamas “stands as a force that can govern or as a force that can administer or can threaten by use of violence, peace becomes impossible. It must be eradicated.”
Hamas’ role in the Palestinian-Israeli conflict demands a closer look. Many analysts have concluded over the years that Hamas is not simply a terrorist organization. Rather, they contend, it is a pragmatic political movement, with deep roots in Palestinian society, that has at times used terrorism.
Israeli Hamas expert Shaul Mishal is one such observer. In 2003, he wrote that despite the horrifying toll claimed by Hamas’ violence, the organization “is essentially a social and political movement, providing extensive community services and responding constantly to political reality through bargaining and power brokering.”
Mishal added that Hamas was “reluctant to adhere to its religious dogma at any price and so has tended to adopt political strategies that minimize the danger of rigidly adhering to principle, doctrine, or ideology at any price, ready to respond or adjust to fluid conditions without losing sight of ultimate objectives.”
Tom Segev, a respected Israeli historian and journalist, is another. He addressed the issue in December 2008, days after the Israeli Defense Forces launched Operation Cast Lead against Gaza, which resulted in approximately 1300 Palestinian and 13 Israeli deaths and the destruction of over 46,000 homes in Gaza. Segev wrote: “Hamas is not a terrorist organization holding Gaza’s residents hostage; it is a religious nationalist movement, and a majority of Gaza residents believe in its path.”
Henry Siegman, who served as executive director of the American Jewish Congress from 1978 to 1994, has gone even further. He wrote in 2009 that, it “is too easy to describe Hamas simply as a ‘terrorist organization’. It is a religious nationalist movement that resorts to terrorism as the Zionist movement did during its struggle for statehood.” (In this connection, it should be noted that two of Israel’s prime ministers belonged to terrorist organizations before the establishment of the state of Israel.)
Siegman argued that, while Hamas’ ideology formally calls for the Palestinian state to be established on the ruins of the state of Israel, that didn’t determine Hamas’ actual policies any more than the same declaration in the Palestinian Liberation Organization charter determined the actions of Fatah, the largest faction of the multiparty PLO.
More recently, in their 2025 book, “While Israel Slept: How Hamas Surprised the Most Powerful Military in the Middle East,” Yaakov Katz and Amir Bohbot describe Hamas as a popular movement, “which is much more than just a group of insurgents. Hamas is the government in Gaza, it runs the schools, the hospitals, the welfare system, and more.”
In 1995, the Clinton administration declared Hamas a terrorist organization via an executive order that also banned Jewish extremist groups. Then, in 1997, the US included Hamas in its new List of Foreign Terrorist Organizations and encouraged other states to do likewise. A number of America’s allies eventually followed suit.
Neutral Switzerland demurred. In June 2009, Switzerland’s Foreign Minister described Hamas as an important political actor which “must not be left out in discussions over a solution to the Middle East conflict.” Unlike the European Union, the minister continued, Switzerland “did not consider Hamas a ‘terrorist organization,’ but condemned any terrorist activities.” In light of the October 7 attack, on May 15, 2025, the Swiss government declared Hamas a banned group in Switzerland for five years.
At various times, Hamas leaders have asserted that resistance is not an end in itself. Hamas has sought to enter the political process and has implicitly recognized Israel within its pre 1967 June War boundaries. Hamas’ leadership has often reiterated its acceptance of a Palestinian state on the June 4, 1967 borders, with East Jerusalem as its capital and with the refugees’ right of return. Often, Israel has assassinated (or attempted to assassinate) these individuals. For example:
Sheikh Ahmed Yassin, a founder of Hamas in 1987, proposed a two-state solution in his long-term hudna (truce) of 1997, and the Hamas government proposed it in 2007 and subsequently. Israel attempted to assassinate Yassin in September 2003, and succeeded in March 2004. Abdel Aziz al-Rantisi, who took over the leadership of the movement in Gaza, was assassinated weeks later. (Al-Rantisi had narrowly escaped an assassination attack in June 2003.)
On January 10, 2007 (following Hamas’ victory in the 2006 legislative and presidential elections), Khaled Meshal, who succeeded Yassin after the latter was assassinated, spoke favourably regarding a Palestinian state based on the 1967 borders, including the right of return and the withdrawal of Israeli troops to those borders. He returned to the issue in the same basic terms the following month and repeatedly in 2010. (Israeli agents attempted but failed to assassinate Meshal in Jordan in 1997.)
After Meshal’s January 2007 remarks, other Hamas leaders made similar statements. Ismail Haniyeh, for example, did the same at his inauguration (and subsequently) as prime minister of the Palestinian national unity government on March 27, 2007. At the beginning of his remarks, Haniya indicated that the government would operate according to the articles of the Palestinian Basic Law developed on the basis of the Oslo Accords. (He was serving as a lead negotiator in the Israel-Gaza ceasefire talks when he was assassinated by the Israelis on July 31, 2024 in Tehran.)
In September 2025, Israel fired missiles into Qatar aimed at Hamas leaders, including negotiators from the Palestinian group engaged in talks on securing a ceasefire in Gaza. The attack did not kill any of the negotiators.
Hamas has committed terrorism against Israelis in the sense of injuring or killing civilians for political aims. So too has Israel, but being a recognized state often gives it impunity for state terror. The first such attack by Hamas, in 1994, was in retaliation for a massacre of Palestinians praying in the Ibrahimi Mosque in the city of Hebron in the West Bank. A Jewish settler opened fire upon the worshippers, killing 20 and injuring many. Hamas vowed to revenge these killings and it did.
Subsequent Hamas attacks against Israeli civilians were linked to specific Israeli atrocities against Palestinian civilians. On several occasions, Hamas extended offers to Israel by which civilians on both sides would be spared from being targeted, but Israel did not accept these offers.
These attacks essentially ended after Hamas’ declaration of a unilateral truce in January 2005, with the exception of an attack in Dimona, inside Israel, in February 2008. In 2016, a Hamas member was involved in a suicide attack on a Jerusalem bus. But Hamas, while praising the attack, did not claim responsibility. On August 18, 2024, Hamas and Islamic Jihad claimed responsibility for a suicide attack on Lehi Street in Tel Aviv in which one person was injured; there were no deaths.
Hamas’ shift in the mid-2000s from political violence to participating in traditional politics posed a dilemma for Western governments. Should they work with Hamas in the hope of moderating its political views? Or should they seek to isolate it and bet yet again on Fatah, the group represented by Mahmoud Abbas, the President of the Palestinian Authority. As journalist and political analyst Paola Caridi put it in her book on Hamas, “After a timid attempt to open up to Hamas, Israel, the United States, and Europe decided on the second option.”
This remains the US-led Western stance toward Hamas, ignoring that the organization is deeply embedded in Palestinian thinking and aspirations. The organization represents an idea of a just society based on Islamic mores, and cannot be eliminated or ignored if the goal is to be a just and lasting peace between Israel and Palestine. Outside efforts to replace Hamas with “something better” – that is, an entity more compliant with Israeli positions – will be seen as illegitimate and will fail.
To successfully address the issue of peace between Israel and the Palestinians, the perspectives that the group represents must somehow find their way into negotiations between the two sides. This will require engagement with Hamas or individuals that share Hamas’ views.
Although a majority of Israelis have supported direct dialogue with Hamas, the record at the government level is not promising. In February 2024, US hostage envoy Adam Boehler held backchannel talks with Hamas representatives in Qatar regarding the release of American hostages captured during Hamas’ October 7 attack. When Israel learned of the talks, they objected and Boehler was removed from efforts to release the hostages held in Gaza. Still, further contacts of this kind remain possible despite Israeli objections.
Nicolas Mladanov, the representative of president Trump’s Board of Peace hinted at a role for Hamas in Gaza’s future when he said in late May that “We are not asking for Hamas to disappear as a political movement.” The statement suggests a possible shift in thinking about Hamas as more than just a terrorist organization, reflecting a reality that is clear to many observers. Importantly, this includes young adults in the US, according to Amo Rosenfeld, writing in the influential Jewish newspaper The Forward in February. Rosenfeld reported that the demographic “increasingly views Hamas as ‘militant resistance’ operating on behalf of the Palestinian people, rather than a self-interested terrorist organization, according to data gathered by the American Jewish Committee.”
Israel and, in particular, the Netanyahu right-wing coalition, which currently governs Israel, would strongly resist such a shift. As far back as 2015, Israeli extremist politician Bezalel Smotrich, who was finance minister on October 7, 2023, described the Palestinian Authority as a burden and Hamas as an asset. He explained that Hamas, as a “clear terrorist group,” is an entity with which outsiders would not push Israel to engage in negotiations toward a two-state solution. The PA, on the other hand, works with the rest of the world, which encourages Israel to negotiate with it.
Netanyahu has adopted Smotrich’s language, arguing that if Hamas were in charge of half a future Palestinian state, it would be impossible to move toward a two-state solution.
Benjamin Tua served during his foreign service career at the State Department in Brazil, Israel, Italy, Japan, Lesotho, and the Soviet Union and its successor states
